10 Ways to Time Travel: Cinematic methods of getting to the past and future

Time travel is a sci-fi device that has lent itself to reinvention again and again, ever since H.G. Wells wrote the first story that had a machine powering a character's ability to make a temporal leap.

Writers' fresh takes on how time travel works open up situations that wouldn't happen in a world where it takes 24 hours to travel one day into the future and where you can't relive your past. Time travel let us watch a teenager hang out with his parents when they were his age, a man become the father to his resistance leader friend, and an agent track down a suspect in two times at once, delivering one of cinema”s most compelling car chases (it helps that Denzel Washington was behind the wheel there too).

New thriller “Time Lapse,” now in theaters and on VOD, has its own way of playing with time: A camera produces photos of a moment 24 hours in the future. (Learn more about “Time Lapse” in HitFix's interview with the director.)

With a whole host of movies (and TV shows and books) delivering unique turn-the-clock-back stories, just how you time travel can get a bit confusing. So here's a HitFix guide to ten cinematic ways to travel through time.

Fair warning: There be spoilers ahead!

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